The desktop, server and device management vendor is at the heart of a consolidating market, but CEO Joe Wang is adamant that the company is looking to go public rather than fearing a potential takeover.

We have done very well standing alone and we are enjoying the ride, Wang told ComputerWire. We are clearly not for sale, we are on a path to an IPO. Wang said the company is in the process of going through the various Securities and Exchange Commission governance rules, but was reluctant to name a date for the IPO.

It’s not going to be next month or the next three months but you’re not looking at the next three years, he said. If the market conditions stay favorable, then it will be in the medium term.

The Salt Lake City, Utah-based company would appear to be in a solid financial position to go public. It was spun out of Intel Corp in September 2002 and has enjoyed 14 consecutive profitable quarters. Year-on-year revenue growth was 26%, 31%, 120% and 88% in the first, second, third and fourth quarters of 2003 respectively, giving the company 50% year-on-year growth for the year.

I certainly don’t expect that we will continue to grow at 88% but we will continue to grow faster than our competitors, said Wang, adding that the company is looking to expand its security management and server management capabilities to achieve continued growth.

Our next step is to go further in the areas we are already in. Patch management is new, but we want to go further to be a security management player, he said. We see that a lot of security management should be a part of the holistic systems management that we provide.

The company added patch management to its portfolio in late 2003, licensing Ecora Software Corp’s Patch Manager database and adding its own vulnerability assessment, patch deployment and remediation technologies on top.

With the same philosophy there are other areas in the security space that could be part of systems management, Wang said, giving examples such as application patch management, virus control and intrusion detection. Wang maintained that the company will look to work alongside specialists in these fields and add its own expertise, rather than move headlong into security management.

Today we already scan for vulnerabilities, so we can take on a bigger role, he said. Anti-virus is a big one. I believe we can work well with them. We have no intention to be an anti-virus player but we can work with them. The same is true of intrusion detection, he said. We can configure right on the desktop PC to they cannot be intruded.

There are also more opportunities for the company to expand its server management capabilities, said Wang, including server provisioning. We have provisioning technology. We can take that and make it better for the back-end server provisioning side, he said.

While LANDesk has capabilities for server management, it does not really compete in data center systems management where vendors such as Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard and IBM have technologies covering systems, network and application management, but instead focuses on server management at a local office or workgroup level.

CA and HP have recently moved closer to LANDesk’s territory through the acquisitions of PC migration specialist Miramar Systems Inc and desktop and server deployment management specialist Novadigm Inc respectively. Meanwhile, security management vendor Symantec Corp acquired deployment, patch and configuration management vendor On Technology Corp.

Performance figures such as LANDesk’s would appear to make it a prime acquisition candidate, but Wang dismissed both the chances of that and the impact of the other acquisitions on its potential for growth.

We work well with these players, he said. These companies have started to see the need to add more to their frameworks and it’s a good market for them to acquire. All these large vendors have already got tons of capabilities in their products, adding one or two more doesn’t add much benefit to using these products.

The framework vendors are not growing. Companies are focusing on real ROI rather than the ‘pure’ story, he continued. It’s about the time to deploy and install. So a lot of attention has now been put on the mid-tier vendors. Companies want one product with all of these functions but quick return on investment.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire